Rangers and Update 28

Classes are in large about niche play and maximizing superior play. If it’s not, then we’re talking about same and blame. Like in Defiance. It’s not very useful and accurate to compare DDO and defiance since the premise – one being a futuristic shooterMMO and the other a D&D based RPGMMO, but while there are different races and beginner ‘class’ they’re entirely inconsequential since all races have the same abilities to choose from.

That’s not true with DDO where one class, pure or otherwise plays differently than another and dependent on class and race, we’re talking about slight beginnings.

To be clear – the difference might be slight and there has been some changes that brings everything into a similar play style, but it’s hard to argue that the nuts and bolts are all the same.

It’s in this post MOTU landscape that some classes have suffered the most and particularly if you take in account both enhancement trees and destinies. Some classes have a better choice of destiny to pick from, but like with ranger – it’s questionable if they have something that suits a 2 weapon fighting tempest, when so much seems to benefit 2 handed weapons or ranged.

This update addresses some of the issues. Particularly that Deepwood sniper wasn’t all that good, Tempest ended up weak and pretty much everything pointed to AA. While AA has not changed yet, Deepwood have now become a cherry picking tree and Tempest much more concentrated around 2 weapon fighting and less clickies.

And that’s good – because in the post MOTU world the ranger suffered from lacking the ability to soak up the damage of the more tanking melee and the ability to avoid some damage like the Swashbuckler and I quit playing mine up until this update.

That’s not to say it’s perfect; but by sharpening the stick on the rangers offensive melee and allowing the ranged part to be a terrific burst type attack, it have made it that much better at straddling the in between super high PRR builds and the ones who rely on spells and avoidance.

The Ranger now feels like a better alternative for that in between play.

And that’s important. Particularly since most rangers are not tactical DC builds, meaning stunning blow and trip. That’s something fighter builds, and to some extent Paladins can.

And they’re not maximum DPS while shrugging off damage like barbarians. Nor are they as effective at avoiding damage like Swashbucklers that combine evasion, dodge AND displacement.

Thus Ranger rely mostly on dodge (poor substitute) and minuscule PRR and that’s not now if you combine that with mediocre DPS (or rather average).

And that’s a terrible scenario for adding lots of clickies to ‘build up dps’ of you’re constantly jumping out of combat to heal yourself.